


Strangers in the Night

by Qualitycontrol



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Alternate History, F/M, Historical Accuracy, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-04-28
Packaged: 2017-11-02 04:33:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/365012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qualitycontrol/pseuds/Qualitycontrol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a camera breaks on the RED base and an intern is sent in mid-battle to fix it, RED find themselves with a startling new addition. Scout, though, finds so much more and struggles to hide it from the rest of the team.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Leader of the Pack

It always took the Administrator a few minutes before she could bring herself to flick on the hundreds of screens before her, each carefully lining the wall like the world's most grand window display for the glory of television. Turning on those security cameras was one of the few utterly satisfying moments in the otherwise steady tediousness of her profession - the kind of thrill that they don't pencil into the job description but really should since the rest was essentially just paperwork and babysitting. Watching those screens light up, flickering on all at once to show a overwhelmingly comprehensive view of each base in its respective glory, it was a majestic moment. It was best, she thought, to put it off - to save it then savor it like a glass of fine wine at the end of a cheap meal - but when she finally could settle into her Eames lounge comfortably enough to bring on that flick of the switch, the entire room buzzed to life with a flickering fury. All at once mess halls were emptying out, barracks were draining of sleepy boys, Heavies were picking up their guns and Scouts were lacing up their shoes, every tiny moment captured by calculated cameras now projecting their findings back in crisp black and white. The Administrator, nestled in front and center amongst the sound and the fury of a sudden war room, couldn't help but crack a smile, despite how uncharacteristic it may have been for her notoriously sterilized disposition. Flicking another switch, she leaned in close to the panel before her, a grotesque smirk playing on her lips.  _Oh yes,_  she thought.  _Let the games begin._

"Mission begins in sixty seconds."

* * *

  


_Bend down, arms loose, knees sturdy underneath you like the marble columns of the ancient world, holding the bat gently, lightly, evenly, arch back, and on one, two, three, take the swing. Throw your whole body into it, pivot, arch, and as soon as you hear that thunder crack of wood hitting leather you do what you do best - you run._

"This ain't no time for batting practice, mate." Scout swung his eyes away from that invisible ball - from the perfect swing - and stared evenly at the Australian to his left. Rifle strapped across his back and cup of coffee in hand, he too was ready for a battle. Gun powder and coffee grounds. It was just your average, typical day in The Suck. Scout scoffed, tipping the bat in his hands to rest evenly on his shoulder.

"There's always time for a little swing here 'n there, gunslinga. You should try it sometime." Sniper cracked a smile, swirling a finger in his cup of coffee nonchalantly before licking it clean.

"Not when the Queen over at HQ calls there ain't. Come on, kid - I'll walk ya to your post."

"Nah." He took another swing - this one sloppier, but still a home run. Damn, he thought, he was technically out of practice but he still had it. "I'll catch ya later. No point goin' all the way to the locker room when I'm just gonna shoot right out there," he swung his bat swiftly towards the bridge between the bases with an even swoop, "and take their fuckin' intel anyway." Sniper gave a bemused shrug, taking a sip of Joe for the road.

"Suit yourself, slugga. I'll see you on the 'field, then." With a tip of his hat he treaded up the steps to the second story, leaving Scout swinging loosely in the courtyard.

"Mission begins in ten seconds." With a heavy sigh he holstered his bat, kicking scornfully at the loose clay at his feet, and with a quick snap he whipped out his Force-A-Nature. Flicking the mic on his headset down into place and giving it a quick tap out of habit, he dallied around the courtyard lazily as the Administrator's voice buzzed with bloodlust in his ear.

"Five, four, three, two,  _one_..."

And he was off.

* * *

_"The enemy has taken our intelligence!"_

_"Our intelligence has returned to our base."_

_"The enemy has dropped our intelligence."_

The Administrator flicked back and forth between RED & BLU microphones, eyes carefully scanning the color-coded screens before her. Only a few seconds in and the battle was already in full swing, bullets ripping through the air and tearing into opposing teams. The beauty of the carnage was staggering - the way such a simple objective could convince grown men to transform into true animals. The fact that the mercenaries had more in common with the men they fought than not never escaped her - in fact, it furthered the thrill of the game. Ask a man to kill his friend and he'll shudder with fright, but tell him that there's twenty thousand dollars in it for him and he'll start lining up the shot before you've finished your sentence. That, she thought, was the real charm of human nature - how easy it was to convince people to kill. Not that it hadn't crossed her mind that these men were killers by nature. No, each of their files and personal records always showed a particular penchant for murder, whether it be extensive dabbling in military affairs or just an affinity for cold-blooded hunting. They needed her as much as she needed them, and most appropriately for the same reasons. It was a sweet little bond they all shared - the kind that only extensive bloodshed could forge.

One of the tiny screens shuddered briefly, sizzling with static before flicking to an electric shade of black. The Administrator's attention shot back to the wall of screens before her as she stood up to read the tiny pressed label printed underneath the monitor. "RED INTEL. RM" - of course. It was Murphonian luck at its finest that one of the two most important cameras out of the hundreds out on the field should fail her now.

"Miss Pauling!" She hissed, slamming her hands down on the control panel before her. A petite, mousy looking woman scurried up from the darkness behind her, a noteworthy stack of papers and manilla folders in hand. She spoke with a soft British accent that only helped secure the immediate impression of unquestionable submission that she gave off.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Camera 89 is not transmitting a signal and we're in the middle of a goddamn match! Rectify this  _immediately_!"

"Yes, ma'am!" Miss Pauling scooted off with a weak whimper, dropping her papers where she stood and tripping towards the polished red rotary phone hung neatly on a nearby wall. The engraving on its dial read "EMERGENCY" in brash black letters that, unsurprisingly, did nothing to comfort those who needed assistance, but Miss Pauling knocked the handset from it's precarious position atop the phone nonetheless, fumbling to place it against her ear. It clicked to life almost immediately.

"Hello? Yes, this is Miss Pauling from HQ. I need a discrete maintenance worker to the Western fort's RED intel room immediately. That's fort 2207b..." She squinted hard over her glasses, running a slender finger down the code list pinned halfheartedly above the rotary phone. "...It's a code 10-15. Yes, yes, a battle is in progress... What? Safety? I don't care about your silly safety regulations! This is of dire importance! ...I don't know! ...I told you,  _I don't know!_...Fine - send whoever!" With an exaggerated huff, she slammed the phone down against its cradle and hastily jogged back towards the Administrator in an awkward kind of run-walk that far too busy people often do, slipping on her earlier abandoned papers in the process.

"They're sending someone right now, ma'am. An intern, I believe."

"Who they send is of no importance," she seethed, taking a deep drag off of her cigarette. "As long as the job gets done without interference." The smoke rolled from her nostrils in hazy streams, exacerbating her bony features into a dragon-like fierceness. "We have a show to run."

* * *

He took the steps to the second floor two at a time, bolting through the throng teammates getting to work building sentries or checking the propane levels on their gas-tanks, and whizzed out onto the roof of the bridge with one slick double-jump. The shingles were already littered with sticky bombs that he skipped his way through, laughing to himself with each dodge.

"Way to aim, cyclops!" He spat, spinning around on his heels in a full-speed game of hopscotch. A grin plastered onto his face, he took a breath to shoot out another string of insults and spun back around, coming face to face with a Soldier's rocket exceedingly close to his face.

"Oh shi-" Without so much as a second thought, he threw himself out of harms way and into the moat below, the heat of the explosion pulsing to life behind him clawing at his skin. He could feel the shot of pain pulse to life as his arm burned with a crisp crackle, halfway between a third degree burn and a sunburn from hell. The rush of cold water raked over this newfound handicap and he yelped without hesitation, his scream muffling into mere gargles in icy depths of the water. It took no time at all for him to right himself and splash up above the freezing river, grasping at his scorched arm, and despite the thrilling call of the opponent's intelligence he wearily dragged himself back through his own base's sewer system. Tapping once more at the microphone on his headset with a hope and a prayer that the water had left it relatively unscathed, he tried his luck.

"Hey hardhat, you got a dispenser 'round here? Goddamn psychopath gave me some serious rugburn." He was greeted with static, most likely from the pool party sloshing around inside the circuits, but within seconds a mellow Southern accent cut in between the senseless fuzz.

"Sure do, pal. Check the intel room. Be on your guard, though - there's no sentry in there. That arm still functional enough to hold a gun?" Scout couldn't help but smirk. Oh, how his teammates underestimated him.

"You friggin' bet. I'll be there in a flash." Engie chuckled softly.

"Don't we all know it."


	2. A Kiss To Build A Dream On

As far as first days go, this one could have been better. Only three hours into what had been advertised as a promising internship for entrepreneurial youngsters and already Penny, the only intern in the break room silly enough to tell a frantic supervisor that yes, she did know how to repair simple circuits, was being suited up and ejected into what appeared to be a disused mill yard that, strangely enough, someone had forgot to stop using.

"There's a kind of...event going on." Her supervisor had explained, frantically handing her what appeared to be a vintage army helmet with a sizable dent in it. She stared mildly, tossing it around in her hands for good measure - very little coming out of Reliable Excavation Demolition surprised her at this point, and that breed of apathy was a little too wizened for her taste. A mere three hours and already she had been faced with a fair share of...unusual tasks. Never before had she been asked to collate and file the death certificates of former employees and, quite frankly, the task of removing them from the payroll seemed a little too much for her already achingly curious sensibilities.

"An event?" She hummed, unzipping the duffle bag of tools she had been handed upon first being hustled into the discretely nondescript van. A wrench, a small pair of pliers, and some electrical tape fell out neatly into her lap and, to her surprise, nothing else. She gave the bag another hearty shake, met with the same lint-riddled emptiness. "Are these the only tools you have?"

"Yes, an event." The balding man perched awkwardly in the opposite seat ignored her question in the way only a skilled bureaucrat could, turning his hat around in his hands with a nervous twitch. "It's a kind of...meeting of competitors. It happens every once in a while. Reliable Excavation Demolition...representatives meet with some of the folks over at Builders League United, our biggest competitor, and they find creative ways to solve the problems facing both companies."

Penny whistled, glancing towards the blacked-out windows of the van. "Sounds like an all out war." Her supervisor blanched visibly.

"Well. It can be. I suppose."

"Why are the windows black?" She asked sweetly, tapping on the glass with a scarlet-painted nail.

"Privacy reasons!" He shot back, a practiced statement impaired by only a slight stutter, and within seconds he was reaching over and refilling the duffle bag with her sparse tool set. "Now, we're almost there so just remember what I told you: if you see our representatives, the ones dressed in red, stay out of their way. Don't speak to them. Don't look at them. Whatever you do, don't interfere. And if you see BLU representatives..." He gulped, nervously adjusting his glasses. "Well, run."

She shot him an inquisitive glance that he met with the best extrapolation he could possibly give.

"Very fast."

He swung open the double-latched door of the van and tossed her out without much ceremony, sunlight exploding into view with a warm burst that only exaggerated the precautions taken to anonymize their trip. "Good luck!" He shouted darkly, slamming the door behind her, and upon looking up from the dusty ground she had landed on she found her noble carriage already bee-lining back towards what was presumably the way it came. Very fast.

Penny stood up, brushing the clay dust off of her palms, and admired the two identical mills wrapped up neatly by a barbed wire fence in the distance that, she discovered, she was now inside of. An army helmet, a bag of "tools", and a silly young girl in a red dress - what a morning, she mused, inspecting the helmet with mild disgust before tossing it aside. She threw the duffle bag over her shoulder and strolled closer to the RED building, the hefty noise of voices and shouts becoming more and more clear with every step. Her curious complacency was shattered by a fight-or-flight like fear deep in her bones as a shot rang out only a few yards away, followed by three more and then a deep, maniacal laugh, sputtering curses in a thick French accent. She froze, listening to the shouts and shots that she realized now surrounded her, before bolting those last few yards to the side-door of the closest mill, throwing herself inside.

Suddenly thankful that she had ignored the womanly advice of her mother to wear heels on her first day to work, Penny squeezed herself into a dark corner and watched as a besuited man in a gas mask lumbered into a nearby courtyard, itching at a behemoth sized weapon in his hands. Red, she noted - he's wearing red. That means technically he's shouldn't shoot her down in her tracks. In another moment of strange clarity, she realized that wearing a red dress was also an unintentional stroke of brilliance, despite more disapproving cries from her mother. "That's tacky, darling!" she had exclaimed, alternating between sucking down a martini and a Pall Mall. "Working for a company called RED and wearing a red dress on your first day…" She tisked, "I thought I raised you to have better fashion sense than that!" Who knew it was an actual dress code here, Penny mused, slinking deeper into the darkness as the man swung around in her direction. Another man entered the courtyard, this one carrying a gun double the size of the impromptu weapon the gas-maniac dawned, and it wasn't long before that horse-sized weapon began spinning in preparation of firing. It whirled loudly as the bald man carrying it bellowed with laughter, laughter that was far too short-lived for Penny's liking. The gas-maniac's itchy trigger finger snapped back quickly and from the belly of his weapon came a sputtering of blue flames that quickly licked their way up his enemy's body. His laughter quickly turned sour and gurgled into shouts of help, but the Pyro only cackled in return, raising his flamethrower above his head in a twisted form of a battle cry.

Blue, Penny noted, biting her tongue to keep from fainting. That other man was wearing blue.

As the Pyro lumbered off to find another fresh kill, she checked to make sure the coast was clear before bolting towards a nearby set of stairs. A sign above the doorway happily proclaimed "INTELLIGENCE" with a friendly arrow pointing down another set of stairs, and for once in this entirely bizarre day she was thankful for RED's eerie politeness. Hopping down the stairs and following a few more clearly marked signs between checking for anyone who might want to add to their body count, she found herself in an oddly empty room, occupied by a few afterthoughts of furniture and a less than discrete briefcase marked "TOP SECRET" despite being in full view. Determined to ignore the inconsistencies she found herself surrounded by, she tossed her duffle bag onto the ground and quickly unpacked while searching the room for the hidden camera she was sent to repair.

Behind a ficus, she was told. It's hidden behind a small potted ficus. At the time she thought they were kidding - after all, if you've got the money to invest in hidden cameras and other slivers of modern futurism and technological gadgetry, why in god's name would you decide to hide it somewhere so cliché?

It didn't take long to locate the sad plant in question - a silly little thing that was completely out of place in the mechanized control room dotted with the whirling of machines and the hum of dot matrix paper printing out from somewhere nearby. She shoved the poor thing aside and found the security camera staring her down, its cords severed neatly from the outlet they were formerly plugged into in what could have only been an intentional slash. "How dramatic." She whistled, beginning to unwrap the wires' casing with deft hands.

"I agree, ma cheri." A voice echoed from behind her, growling in the same thick French she had heard when first entering the base. She whirled around on her toes, stumbling backwards upon realizing she was faced by a masked man wielding the kind of polished revolver that would have sent western gun-slingers running. A cigarette hung from his lips, adding another flounce to his debonair disposition and, despite aiming his gun squarely towards her chest, he still managed to dig a lighter out of his pocket and smoothly click it on it with one flick. His suit, instinct shouted as Penny fought off the numbing chill of adrenaline shooting through her chest, what color is his suit? Her mind fumbled to put two and two together. Blue, she realized. It's blue.

Her heart dropped.

"True, I have been here a vile, but I have to zay I have never once zeen a voman on the base. Vat exactly are you doing 'ere, ma petite?" Penny gulped hard, mustering up all of the courage of every heroine she had ever seen on the silver screen, from Garbo to Bacall. Standing up straight, she relaxed her shoulders back and blinked softly, trying to hardest to appeal to the side of him that, as he said, hadn't seen a woman in a while.

"Who me? Oh, I'm just an intern. I'm new when it comes to at all these big machines and..." she paused, husking her voice as much as she possibly could. "Big men." She pouted innocently, tucking her hair back with gentle fingers. "I was only sent here to repair a broken camera. For Reliable Excavation & Demolition." She finished sweetly, emphasizing each word with a nod as though remembering the title of the company was task enough for her gentle sensibilities. The Spy faltered, letting a small smirk fall across his face. He took two steps closer, paused, and then with one deft click cocked his gun. Her careful damsel act shattered with a heart-wrenching smash.

"Ah, see, ma cheri, zat is vere you should have stopped. Because voman or not, a RED is still a RED." His gun trailed up to her forehead. "And RED's do not last long 'ere."

She braced for the worst, stumbling back against the wall behind her for support, and suddenly found herself wishing that she really hadn't taken this job in the first place. Promising internship or not, no girl should have to deal with a surly frenchman with a gun - at least not at ten o'clock in the morning. As last thoughts of all the things she never did and wished she hadn't done flooded her head, she shook in horror as the bullet left the barrel with a fearsome sonic boom. She wondered if she could send out some kind of cosmic projection of a last thought to her mother - a simple "I love you," maybe - but it took her as a better idea not too. Knowing her mother, she'd probably just criticize the fact that she even considered trying something so new-agey.

And so she stood frozen, paralyzed in a slow motion minute, ready for heaven or hell or indefinite nothingness, but before she could feel that itty bitty piece of steel enter her chest cavity and render her gone forever she found herself suddenly tumbling towards the ground, hitting the worn shag carpeting with a hard thud. On her back on the floor she watched in confusion as another shot rang out with a booming echo, this one with twice the oomph and in half the time, and suddenly the BLU Spy's head, splattering across the wall and speckling everything in the room with red, became a mere suggestion. Her heart pounded, fumbling around in her chest as she tried to catch her breath. What, exactly, had just happened?

"Fuckin' rat talks way too much." A slim boy no older than she was crouched down to her level, gun still smoking in hand. He took a deep breath and pushed the microphone on his headset out of the way, pulling her up by the hand. Her eyes shot to his shirt. Red, she noted. Count your blessing where you can get them. "You okay, dahlin'?" He chirped with a comically impeccable Boston dialect. Still shaking, Penny wiped the specks of blood from her face, eyeing the graphic red streaks with a shaky hand.

"You... saved my life?" He let out a short laugh, swinging his gun up to rest on his shoulder.

"Man, you're really not from 'round here, huh?" In one quick motion she pulled him close and planted a hard kiss on his cheek, grinning the way only a girl who's still alive after having a gun to her head can.

"Thank you! Oh my god, thank you!" Dumbstruck and flushed, Scout rubbed the back of his neck in childish embarrassment. Sure, he had realized right away that she was an actual girl on the base and that alone was a first, but the part he would never admit was that had been a first kiss of sorts too. At least one from someone other than his mother. He stuttered to find the right words, averting his eyes from her in hopes that would make his tongue start working properly again.

It didn't.

"You're, uh... you're..."

"Get down!" She screamed, yanking him down to the floor and rolling under the nearby Intel desk. He felt the heat from a BLU Pyro's flamethrower beat against the wall where he had been standing only moments ago and in one slick motion he swung his pistol into position, aimed precisely at the Pyro's knee from the gap under the desk. It took one shot to bring him to the ground, flamethrower finally clicking off, and one more to give him the same kind of face lift that the Spy had received. Penny watched in awe, shielding herself behind the cheap MDF of the desk, and wondered if this is what her supervisor had meant by "creative problem solving". With the enemy eliminated Scout sat up under the desk, readjusting his cap, and gave Penny a quick once over.

"I guess that makes us even." He shot. She smiled lightly in reply, shaking her head out with a deep sigh. Will the adrenaline rush ever end? "So..." Scout hesitated, rubbing the back of his neck again sheepishly. "Do I get to give you the same reward?"

She could tell he was only half kidding, hinting blatantly the way boys always did when they thought they were being clever, and they both paused for a moment. Giving each other a real respective once-over - the only opportunity they really had to do so what with the life-threatening danger and all - the sudden gravity of the situation sunk in like a wet blanket dropped from above. They were both alive. Strangely, surely, they lived thanks to one another. It was an odd place, Penny realized, this base, but the heated rush of adrenaline still pumped under her skin, whispering with every breath that she was still alive, so instead of crawling away with a scoff to finish her job and get the hell out she instead smiled, a bubbly rush swelling up inside of her belly. With a turn of her head she tapped her cheek lightly, a form of expressive permission to give it his best shot.

Scout visibly reddened as something new settled over him - something he hadn't ever experienced before as far as he could remember: shyness. Girls had never been much of an question for him back home since most avoided him completely, put off by his big mouth and bloodlust, and a few years in boot-camp had left him in the perpetual company of fellow XY's. Girls as a whole had always been nothing more than a pleasant thought and a late-night dream, but had you told him a few hours ago that this instinctual reaction to their company was a stuttering shyness, he would have taken out your kneecaps with a home run worthy swing.

Heart thumping in his chest like a wild animal, he leaned in close to her - close enough to smell her faintly sweet perfume like a beacon to his senses - and slowly, gently, he planted a soft kiss on her cheek. He hesitated, lingering as he pulled away, every bone in his body telling him to find a way to her lips - to taste the cherry flavored lip gloss that he could smell from here and lick her lips clean of it. She exhaled slowly as he hung in the air next to her, struggling to fight off the urge to take this new creature in his arms and explore her completely right then and there. Sense fought a hard battle in his head, but in the end, as always, it was the Administrator that won. His headphone sizzled back to life, words crackling through the campfire fuzz of static still whispering in his ear.

"We have dropped the enemy intelligence!"

He snapped back to reality, attempting to stand up before realizing with a hard thud to his head that he was still under the intel desk. Penny watched on with a teeny chuckle, finally able to catch her breath from the passed moment.

"Aw, fuck!" He coughed, rubbing harshly at the small bump now forming on the back of his head. "The friggin' match!" He scrambled out from under the desk, fumbling to pick up his gun in the process. Wiping the blood off his pants, his eyes shot around the room - alright, the intel was still there. That's a plus. Nobody seemed to be nearby either, but you could never be too sure with Spies around. He fumbled to reload the Force-A-Nature's now empty barrel, chucking the empty shells onto the floor. "Goddamn, I bet there's only like twenty minutes or somthin' left now. We probably haven't even made a capture yet - friggin' dumbasses." Penny picked herself up slowly, wearily eyeing the room around her.

"A capture?" Scout laughed, looking up at her in-between shoving shells into his gun.

"Yeah, a capture. We take their intel and they try to take ours. Doesn't work out that well for the poor fuckers, usually." Cracking the barrel back and cocking it in one swift motion, he swung it back over his shoulder and took a breath.

"So what are ya doin' here anyway? I mean, ya obviously a RED," he nodded lightly towards her now blood-splattered dress, "but you definitely don't seem like a new recruit."

"I'm an intern," she explained with a sigh, "from Reliable's headquarters. The wires to that camera over there were cut and since this little 'meeting of competitors', as my supervisor called it, was taking place no one else would come. So, they sent me instead." She paced around the room lazily, examining each little thing with a curious meticulousness. "I guess they figured there's no harm in killing an intern." Scout whistled low, finally finding his way to the room's dispenser and leaning against it. The flow of health was immediate, and he could already feel his burns start to peel away in a minty antiseptic rush. Thank god for Engineers, he thought to himself. Anything to avoid the damn Medic.

"That's fucked up, man." He hummed, crossing his arms. "They expected you to get snuffed out here? So, uh, does that mean..." he paused for a moment, catching her eyes as she continued to loll around the room. "Does that mean that once the camera's fixed...you're outta here?" Penny sighed, taking a seat against the bullet-riddled intel desk. Even its wood, she noticed, was lacquered a faint cherry red.

"I don't know. At first I thought so, but no one really had any interest of coming here to drop me off in the first place, let alone pick me back up." She traced out her initials with her finger on the surface of the desk, inspecting it haphazardly for dust. Scout watched on in anticipation, the color slowly coming back to his face. "I suppose they'll come back once you guys are gone." She glanced at him briefly as he rubbed his mouth on his sleeve to cover up a smile. "When will that be?"

"Sweetheart, you're gonna be here a while."


	3. Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition

The smoke in the control room had doubled in thickness since the RED camera had gone dead, the Administrator dragging away tirelessly on cigarette after cigarette in an attempt to satiate her buzzing nerves. Improvisation wasn't her strong suit, but being a woman of innumerable hidden talents she found a place for it in her repertoire, sending out morale-boosting reports of how the RED intelligence had been captured and secured to all BLU mercenaries. Men in battle, she knew, would never stop to question the accuracy of a report - they were far too focused on sinking their teeth into blood and bones, into making bodies out of boys. The thrill of the battle, after all, wasn't always in the win - sometimes it rested solely on the shoulders of the body count.

As if on cue, the sole dark screen on an otherwise buzzing wall of pictures and plans flickered to life with a faint click. With a quiet hiss of excitement she stood up, eyes fixed on its tiny screen, and resisted the unfamiliar urge to smile. At least not all of her underlings were incapable, she mused. In fact, the girl on screen before her, a tiny, pixie-like thing with specks of blood on her face applied liberally in a pointillist masterpiece, crouched before the camera with a look of intense focus that seemed entirely genuine. Perhaps under different circumstances, in a different time, this girl could have actually been a valuable asset to The Company - something more than a doomed intern in a truly deadly corporate world.

Pity, really, that things worked out as they did.

Miss Pauling, glasses askew on her heart-shaped face, skittered up promptly from the endless darkness of the control room, a freshly printed report creased neatly in her hand.

"Ma'am, I've received word that the RED Intel room is back on-line."

"I see that, Miss Pauling." She growled, taking one last drag before finally putting out her smoldering cigarette on the control panel. "Good work." The mousy girl lingered with a palpable hesitation, glancing over the report once more before proceeding gingerly.

"Ma'am, what of the girl who repaired it - the intern we sent? Shall I send someone to pick her up?" The Administrator lit up her latest Salem with a dry sense of satisfaction, puffing coolly on its unfiltered end.

"She is to be left where she is." Miss Pauling faltered, taking a step closer despite her better judgment.

"But ma'am..."

"Leave. Her." She repeated, each word punctuated with a pinprick of venom. "Instruct the financial department to strike her from the payroll. I am confident that BLU will take her off our hands." Pauling paused and gathered her thoughts, gulping audibly for the sake of the poor girl. She quickly skimmed over the report in her hand just to be sure she had read right the first time; lo and behold, it  _was_  only the girl's first day. The pragmatic part of her wriggled to assure herself there was nothing to be done. Compassion, she found, had no foot-hold in the Administrator's heart, and although it was a successful method for running a company, it was dizzying when it came down to life and death matters such as these that reached beyond each band of mercenaries. Those men knew what they signed up for – they had been won over by their petty bribes and agreed to bloody their hands. This girl, though, had no such say in the matter. Miss Pauling paused, adjusting her glasses with a gentle nudge, before clearing her throat a little louder than she would have liked.

"Yes, ma'am." She repeated, this time her voice clear of all emotion. With a dutiful turn she drove herself back into the shadows of the room, exiting as quietly as she had entered.

Yes, the Administrator thought with a creased smirk, returning to her chair and all 137 screens before her. Pity.

 

* * *

It took three steps to line up a jump like that - three full-speed slams against the bullet-riddled wood floor to clear the gap between the second story and the bridge roof. Scout took four, stumbling on his last, and still missed, slipping against the cracked shingles with a bruised thud and careening head-first towards the moat yet again.

He pulled himself to the surface of that same icy water he had waded through in a mere twenty minutes earlier, taking in frustrated gulps of fresh air before shrieking out high cry of " _Shit!_ " and slapping his hand against the water's freezing surface. He shook out his headset yet again, the static now multiplying into a full-fledged snowstorm instead of just that earlier mist of white noise, and waded angrily towards the enemy's base. He may have been in the middle of a battle, Force-A-Nature in hand and prize in sight, but his mind was still bolted down a hundred yards back in his very own intel room, thoughts focused on the pretty little girl who he had technically kissed before even knowing her name.

"Penny," she had told him, throwing a casual military salute. "It's technically short for Penelope, but I don't think anyone's ever called me that." She cocked her head to one side, eyeing his dog tags with a troubled smile. "And you're the 'Scout' for this team, right? There was a record of another guy dressed just like you back at HQ. Do all of you go by the same names?" Scout smiled smugly, tapping on the dispenser he leaned against in irritation - eleven PhD's and these things still consistently crap out towards the end.

"Yep. For 'privacy reasons'." Penny choked out a laugh.

"Where have I heard that before."

"We lose our names when we get here. It was part of our contract, ya hear. Change your name, work as a contract mercenary for six months, and never have to work another day in your life ever again. Deal of a lifetime, or somethin' like that." He turned away from the dispenser, giving it a tiresome kick for taking up too much of his time, then stretched out his freshly healed arm in a test-run. "Didn't work out. Honestly, I don't even remember my name. I didn't go by it much back home anyway. Think it was somethin' with J, but hell if I know what." Penny narrowed an eyebrow as he squatted down into a batters position, arms swinging.

"You've been here six months and you don't remember your name?" Scout shot out a hearty laugh between his practice swings. He dropped his arms to his sides, shooting her a weak smirk before gearing up again, duffle bag slung across his back and Force-A-Nature in hand.

"Dahlin', I've been here a little longer than six months."

"How long, then?"

"Four years, I think. Maybe five. I stopped countin' a while back." She gasped audibly, eyes wide. All Scout could do was smile. "So get comfortable. You're gonna be here a while."

 

* * *

He pulled himself from the chill of the water and into the BLU base's sewers, taking off his hat and shaking out his cropped hair like a wet dog. He was never off like this - never off enough to miss a jump or misstep in the middle of a battle - that was all just child's play. Even when matches stretched into the dead of night when the air got so cold that it hurt to breathe he could still keep his footing, steady and neat. If he didn't have that - his speed, his precision - what did he have left?

Tossing his hat back on his head, he shook off these thoughts and pressed on, doing what he did best: he ran. Clearing past Soldiers and Snipers, jumping over Pyros and ducking around Spies, he double-jumped up the stairs while firing off blasts behind him, not bothering to check the carnage. With one valiant jump he rocketed down the stairs, only to pick himself up at the bottom and run some more. He was in. Winding through the deep belly of the BLU base, he picked his way through the halls until he came face-to-face with the all too familiar intel room - the mirror image of his own in all ways, even down to the thick braided cords running like train-tracks across the floor. Their briefcase stood unguarded, a sentry in the room already sapped and immobilized rather neatly, and for once he actually saw some importance in that rat bastard of a RED Spy. He probably got himself shot in the process, though, Scout mused - why else would he just leave the intel behind?

"His loss." he whispered, tipping his baseball cap in an uncanny moment of respect. With that, he snatched up the intel, threw it over his back, and was gone in a flash.

This was always the worst part - taking the intelligence back without catching a bullet to the face or a rocket to the crotch. His heart pounded like a bass drum out of time with the rest of the band as he quickstepped through the BLU base, papers trailing behind him like a scarlet letter proclaiming his guilt. Within seconds he could hear the cries of an Engineer trailing after him, probably already sore over the loss of his sentry, and it wasn't long until the gunshots began. Bullets ricocheted past, striking walls only a few inches from where he stood, and without looking back he could tell his crowd of followers was only growing. The heat of a Pyro's flamethrower nipped at his heels and the charge of the BLU Heavy's minigun assaulted his ears, revving up like a death wish in high speed.

_Just a little further, man, a little further - focus._ Scout double-timed his way through those last five yards inside the base, holding his breath as he took the leap from the second story, papers still fluttering in a dizzying fury behind him. Despite how intensely he willed his head to stay clear, to keep focused, his mind flashed back to his own intel room - to this strange new girl - and his heart skipped a beat.

With an awkward stumble he landed on the bridge below, falling forward onto his hands in one crooked motion. His gun spun from his grip, smacking against the side of the bridge with a wistful clink, and suddenly the pain and shock of the situation rendered him frozen and dumbstruck. Had he just fallen? In all the years he'd been here he had never,  _never_  once fallen.

"Zere you are, leetle man." The words spoken behind him dripped with a throaty Russian inflection, and suddenly Scout noticed the sound of the minigun already revving. He rolled over onto his back, meeting the lumbering giant face to face, and within seconds he was stumbling to get up as fast as he possibly could. "Try to escape ziz!" The Heavy fired, the click of his trigger as loud as thunder, and leaving his gun behind Scout ran as fast as his legs would take him despite the searing pain in his ankle that jolted his senses with every step. A lone rifle shot rang out behind him, cracking through the battlefield, and he turned in time to catch a quick glimpse of that same Heavy falling against the clay with a thick thud, his precious Sasha, now splattered with his own blood, lolling out of his hands. At least someone was on their A-game, Scout thought, flashing a quick A-OK sign to Sniper who was undoubtedly perched up in the rafters, cup of coffee still in hand.

From the bridge to the Intel room he didn't once slow, afraid that the slightest sign of stopping would cause him to collapse in pain right then and there. _She'll be there, though,_  he told himself.  _She'll be there._ He chanted the words to himself like the holiest of prayers and willed his legs to take him faster, rounding the corner into the Intel room and throwing himself inside with one last heave of strength.

He crashed against the carpeting, out of breath and burning with pain, and after a few seconds of simply lying there like a fish out of water he finally willed himself to open his eyes. Nothing. His attention shot to every corner of the empty room in anticipation - to the intelligence, still propped up in place, the dispenser, the crappy potted plant which had been returned neatly to its original position against the wall. He pulled himself up onto one arm with a horrible sigh, drawing his tired eyes back down to the dirty carpeting below, and in one slow motion he pulled the BLU intel from his back and chucked it onto the desk.

His earpiece crackled to life.

_"Victory."_

_  
_


	4. 19th Nervous Breakdown

It took him a good fifteen minutes before he could bring himself to call for the Medic. It wasn't just that the man's unorthodox methods scared him, which they did in droves, but the gravity of the whole situation had to sink in and now, he figured, was as good a time as any. He flopped back down onto the carpeting and convinced himself that Penny had never existed - that he had been here way too friggin' long and that the long nights and head trauma had finally gotten to him in the worst way possible. As the room began to darken he had finally convinced himself that he was just going crazy - the shadow of the Medic entering his field of vision in a blurry haze - and the first thing he needed to do once the room stopped spinning was get himself the hell out of here. Get back home, back to Boston. Back to Ma and the boys and the shit shine of the real world. German accents and Southern voices prodded at his aching skull, and Scout watched with only a passing interest as he was lifted up and shuffled through the dim corridors, down into the underbelly of the fort, towards the searing halogen lights of the infirmary.

 _You're just crazy, man,_ he told himself in the spinning darkness. _Just real fuckin' crazy._

_  
_

* * *

_  
_

_"..._ Whatddya think, mate? Should we be a little suspicious of this turn of events?"

"I zee no reason to be. Alzo I don't agree vith 'eem most of ze time, I trust herr Spy on zis matter. If anyone should be zuzpicious it is him, and he zeems very... content." A light scoff rattled Scout's senses, his head still buzzing in a drug-induced effervescent hangover.

"Doc, I think we're all pretty content."

"Zat aside, I zee no threat zat, if necessary, we cannot exterminate." An eerie chuckle reverberated throughout the room.

"Right on that."

The sleepy darkness of his blackout finally began to fade, sounds and noises coming together semi-coherently into familiar shapes and forms, and with an unrestrained groan Scout fought tiredly to pull open his still-heavy eyes. The halogen lights of the infirmary seared his hazy consciousness, but despite the burning halos and blurs he could still make out Sniper poised lazily at the end of his bed, sunglasses dangling from his half-unbuttoned shirt and hat in hand. He turned his attention towards the rousing boy with an unimpressed stare, shooting him a wiry smirk.

"There we are, then. Didn't think you could sleep all the way to the next mission, didja?" Medic too entered his field of vision, head held disapprovingly, and gave him a perfunctory once-over.

"Get up and valk." He snapped, inspecting the wrappings Scout now discovered wound tightly around his right leg like a half-hearted mummy. He grumbled weakly, pulling himself up onto one elbow, and hung a limp hand over his eyes to shield them from the blindingly institutional lighting.

"Nice to see you too, doc." Medic scoffed in reply, yanking the sheets from his bed in a sudden flurry of ice cold air.

"Now." With a muttered curse he finally obliged, stumbling out of bed and stretching out his aching muscles before taking a few meek steps forwards. His body felt like an old kid's toy - stiff and achy in places that he couldn't even remember being hurt in, but he knew better than to ask the much-mocked question of "what happened?" It was the same thing, he knew, that always happened - it was war. He turned back to Medic with a fiery glance that asked "now what?", throwing out his arms to accentuate his point. "Further. Valk to ze door and back." With another heavy sigh Scout lumbered towards the infirmary door, his joints cracking audibly, before pivoting sloppily and walking back. Medic watched with a critical eye, face devoid of all expression beyond that of a professional coldness.

"Anything else, yer highness?" He grunted, taking a seat on the edge of the bed with a disgruntled thunk.

"Zay what you vill, boy, but ven I found you you veren't even able to move zat leg." Scout raised an eyebrow, inspecting the bandaged limb with a curious glance - had it really been that bad? A few hours ago he would have thought that falling did nothing more than bruise your ego, but now, struggling with the medicinal-tinted aftershocks of bandages and breaks, his perspective began to morph.

"He's right, mate." Sniper cut in, nodding wearily in agreement. "Broke that ankle clean through the skin. You were in rough shape before doc here fixed ye up." He shifted his weight from one foot to another in a noiseless sway, tucking his thumbs into the belt of his pants. Scout glanced up at the Australian and found his stare met with a gruff concern. And here it was - he had been dreading this moment ever since Sniper had saved his skin, and before the words had even left his mouth Scout knew what he had to face. "I've never seen you fall like that during a match before. And we've known each other quite a while." He added the last part as a subtle afterthought, but he was right - Sniper had been here only a few weeks longer than he had and in all the battles they had faced together never once had he taken a tumble. Scout's footing was the one sure-fire thing in the madness of those battles - now, though, there seemed to be so little left. "Ya alright, kid?" Scout rubbed his bruised temples with one outstretched hand, flicking the sleep from his eyes wearily. How exactly do you go about explaining what he dreamt up? Sure, they've all been here a while, but nobody else has let the imprisonment get to them so obviously and in such an...unusual way.

"Yeah," he mumbled, wiping his nose on his sleeve. "Just got a lot on my mind is all." Medic let out a sharp crack of laughter from his seat on the other side of the room. Scout hadn't noticed him walk away and found him now filling out paperwork with a terrifyingly steady hand.

"God knows ve all do now." Sniper gave a low hum in agreement, averting his eyes from Scout's confused glance. He tossed looks between the two men before him, neither bothering to meet his stare. Don't all explain at once, he thought gruffly.

"Now? Whaddaya mean now, doc?"

"Ah, you vere unconscious when she showed up, I zuppose." His words rung out hollowly against the white tile of the room, each word hitting Scout once and then again in echo like a 1-2 KO punch. His heart dropped in his chest, leaving a warm shiver deep in his bones that he just couldn't seem shake off. _She._

 _"_ Aye," Sniper interrupted, drilling more proof through his carefully constructed facade. "We've got ourselves a girl 'round here now. A real doll. Demo found her towards the end of the match in the intel room. Watched as she beat a BLU Heavy with our own intel case." He coughed out a laugh, flicking at his lip with a dirty thumb. "Real feisty one, she is." Scout froze in a dizzying head-rush, jaw slack, and suddenly all those thoughts that had plagued him during battle - every silly emotion that had caused his weakness, his dizziness, his falls - they all came flooding back.

"A...a girl?" He stuttered, his voice cracking slightly to his own surprise.

"'At's right. Says HQ dropped her off to repair a tripped camera mid-battle. 'Goes without saying that no one thinks they're comin' back." Before he could stop himself he fumbled to pull on his trainers, picking them up from the tangled mess of his belongings on the floor next to the infirmary bed. "She still around?" He asked between knotting laces, only bothering to shoot his teammate a quick glance. Sniper watched on to his ambitious re-dressing with a suspicious grin which Scout could only imagine the connotations of.

"Sure, sure. Was down in the washroom last I heard." He hummed. "I'm not sure it's such a good idea that you should pay her a visit, though, mate. You don't seem quite right, if you don't mind me saying." He paused briefly as Scout stood up, grabbing his hat and duffle bag in one quick motion before meeting him eye to eye. It was the first time he had paused fully since the mention of the girl.

"Yeah, you're right." Scout shot, eyes locked securely with the man before him. "You pee in fuckin' jars and I'm not quite right." He flashed his teammate the slyest of smiles, pulling his baseball cap back onto his head with a quick flick of the wrist. "If you don't mind me sayin'." Sniper smirked in reply, watching on with a smile as the boy before him shot past the protests of Medic and down the hall at a typical full-speed sprint.

Well, I'll be, he hummed to himself, arms laced across his chest. Scout was back.


	5. Anything Goes

The halls of the barracks were a-flurry with a hushed rumble of noise and voices, trained mercenaries turning into tittering school-girls in the span of a few brief hours. Sprinting full speed through the halls was all Scout could do to satiate his jumbled need to see the cause of all the commotion again - to make sure she was blood and bones, that this all wasn't just an insane delusion brought on by his umpteenth year of haphazard imprisonment. He dared a quick glance into the mess hall as he darted past and found a cluster of his teammates gathered round the dining table, heads pushed together in a pow-wow of thoughts and chatter, undeniably about the sudden and strange appearance of a sudden and strange girl, and voices caught his ear amidst the low pool of conversations, sharp American drawls debating whether or not she could be trusted while Scottish accents recounted her notorious beat-down in the intel room. With a disgusted shake of his head Scout quickened his pace to hurry past. They were suspicious of her - some of them were honestly and truly suspicious. He had seen her with his own eyes, touched her, talked to her, and the girl was as innocent as apple pie as far as he was concerned, but he applauded his teammates' thinking ahead. Now if only the assholes would actually put that thinking to good use and use it on the damn battlefield instead of on the home front.

The run, he found, usually a head-clearing experience, did nothing to settle the plague of thoughts assailing his still-fragile mind in regards to that silly girl that had broken his senses with a wink and a smile. Had she been hurt? What if that Heavy she tackled had lived? Did the BLU's now know about their lone lamb amongst lions, and even worse, if they did what did they plan to do about her? Such baby-faced collateral would be the perfect leverage to gain their intel, or maybe they thought she herself knew about its contents and planned to do whatever it takes to gain that knowledge themselves, even if it meant...

He gulped hard and picked up his pace to a reckless sprint, leaving such horror-struck thoughts of maybes and could-of's trailing behind. Instead he willed his mind to focus on breathing, on propelling his still-aching muscles forward at top speed, and hopping down the stairs with one quick jump he continued on his way, rounding the corner towards the base's expansive yet much disused laundry room with a skid. A sudden hum of song met his ears, a gentle childish soprano winding quietly down the halls, and as his heartbeat quickened to an unruly foxtrot he willed his step to slow, listening to the innocently girlish hum with surprisingly flushed cheeks. He strained to make out the words to her soft tune of a song, each line becoming more and more clear as he approached the red-laquered door with "WASH," printed on it, "etc." added on as a hasty afterthought in dribbling white paint, and by the time his fingertips touched the doorknob the lyrics were crystal clear.

_"Wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up in the morning when the day is new; and after having spent the day together, hold each other close the whole night through..."_

He finally found it in himself to halt completely, his legs freezing underneath him in a sudden atrophy, and as her falsetto words sunk in so did an accompanying bittersweet shudder. A love song. Even after seeing men's lives drip away right before her eyes, after watching helplessly as one tried in cold blood to take her own, she could still sit down at the end of the day and hum a love song with sweet surrender. Only then, in that silly pop song, did he realize what the team now had before them - someone from outside of their cold and callous world of automatic head shots and occupational hazards stepped through the looking glass but retained her curiously unfazed perspective from the other side, and with a flash of remarkably deep insight Scout suddenly realized how akin to them she really was. In a strange sense they were all professionals, them at doing what they were told, whether it be recon, defense, or even murder, and her at doing whatever she could, adapting to the hazards and missteps she was thrown into with a quick pirouette.

His heart quickened back to a crooked gallop and the urge to see her surged back to life inside of him, devouring his sense with one quick, messy bite. He swung open the door and pushed his way in, calling out her name in a sudden burst of need - the need to make sure she was okay, to protect her if she wasn't, to make sure she was even real.

She stood over one of the room's industrial-sized sinks with an unflinchingly sprightly air, one of Scout's own t-shirts hanging loosely over her tiny frame in a kind of make-shift garment, and as steam rose around her in a hazy effervescent halo she scrubbed tirelessly at the Rorschach blots of blood spotted on her dress. As he called out her name she turned with a quick fright, tugging tightly on the hem of his shirt in a measly attempt to cover her exposed thighs, yet it only took a brief glimpse of her semi-indecency before Scout swung around on his heels with a start, shielding his eyes with both hands in a less-than-gentlemanly show of automatic modesty.

"Whoa, whoa - Oh fuck, I'm so sorry! I didn't know you were  _actually_  doin' laundry! I swear I didn't see anything!" Eyes still covered, he grappled blindly to find the doorknob, hitting the wall instead in a series of awkward knocks. "I'll, uh..."

"Oh! Don't be silly," she cut in, wiping the splashed water from her face. "I'm decent. Now turn around before you make me feel like a nudist."

"You sure?" He shot weakly, a hand still plastered against his face.

"Of course I'm sure." Pausing, he slowly peeled his hand away and swung it back to his side, turning to face her with a shy kind of shuffle. She  _was_ decent in the basic sense of the world, his shirt falling precariously to her upper thighs, and she met him with a nonchalant smile despite her lack of formal pants.

"I hope you don't mind about the shirt - I didn't mean to take it without asking." With an embarrassed sigh she leaned back against the sink, tugging at it to show off the dark splotches of water. "The guy in the overalls gave me some of your extra clothes to wear while I cleaned up." Scout took a few more steps forward into the unkempt junkyard of a room, kicking an empty bottle of beer out of the way with a wistful clink. "He said that you were the closest to my size." She added as a light afterthought.

 _"_ N-no problem at all," he mumbled, crossing his arms low across his chest. "You can keep it. You know, if you wanna." He swung his eyes up to meet hers with a light blush, but she only smiled and turned back to her laundry. How could she make him feel like this with something as little as a smile? He felt like a chocolate bar left outside in the sun when he was around her, warm and uncharacteristically sloppy in all ways, and part of him wondered if all girls could break him down in such a precise and calculated way. He hardly knew her yet his ears grew hot and something in his chest fizzed like a freshly opened can of pop just being near. Swaying his weight from one foot to another, he gave his arm a nervous rub before promptly changing the subject.  _"_ What were you singing?" Penny froze mid-scrub, looking back at him with a crooked expression of embarrassment.

"The Beach Boys," she purred modestly. "You've never heard that song? It's a new hit - all over the radio all day and all night."

"There's no radio here, dahlin'. Believe me, we've tried every crackpot trick in the book to rig one up, but even Engie with his eleven doctorates or whatever can't find enough parts to make one work." She whistled low, giving her forehead another quick wipe.

"No radio, no music," she swung around with a dramatic swipe, motioning towards the unsettling mess of a room around her. Despite being labeled "wash", there wasn't a single washing apparatus in sight - instead only broken sentries and dusty gym equipment cluttered up the floor, pushed in among other strange and abandoned treasures. "No washing machines." She continued, "This place wasn't meant for long term residents, was it?" She tilted back to face him with a knowing grin. "It's a wonderful song, though." Scout brushed off a thin layer of dust from one of the nearby bench presses, a dramatic knife wound ripped through its padding from what could only be assumed was a routine scrimmage between the boys, and sat down with a sigh. Contrary to popular belief, his battle-bruised muscles weren't fully in the clear and the impetuous run over here had reminded him of why he really should start listening to Sniper.

"Sure sounded like it." He whistled with a brief pause, rubbing the back of his neck in an uncomfortable stretch. He found himself doing a lot of that lately, actually, and his own awkwardness was beginning to poke a hole in his already bruised ego. Things sure were changing fast, he mused. "You should sing it again sometime. You know, give me a rundown of the Billboard chart back home." Penny faltered for a brief moment before throwing herself back into her work, scrubbing at her dress even harder in hopes of hiding her mystified grin.

"I'm not much of a singer." She cooed wistfully. With a cry of disbelief Scout rushed to her side, hanging over the side of the sink languidly while she continued to scrub.

"What are ya talkin' about? You've got some pipes on ya! Nobody  _else_  here can sing - not well, anyway. Pyro tries but that…well, that's just a real fuckin' mess." She laughed sweetly but seemed genuinely unconvinced of his complements in the way girls often are.

"Shame I'm such a modest lady, then, huh?" He raised an eyebrow swiftly and gave a bemused nod towards her current attire which she met with a smug shuffle, yanking her shirt down even further. "My point, mister etiquette, is that you guys could use a little song and dance around here." And it took only a moment for it to sink in just how right she was. Once off the battlefield everyone seemed to slink into a languid state of boredom, keeping busy with menial tasks just as a way to pass the time between missions, and even the rowdy and carefree moments that struck here and there still seemed placated by a looming sense of apathy. Behind the job titles and the histories and the roaring call to arms, they were still just prisoners, abandoned and forgotten about after each ceasefire tolled.

With a heaving sigh he pulled his baseball cap off and ran a hand through his hair, pushing his bangs forward into a smooth tousle, and pausing dramatically he mustered up the courage to speak. "I'm gonna tell you a secret," Penny let her laundry slip back into the sink with an intrigued glance, looking over at him with her full attention. "But you gotta promise not to laugh." He finished, a finger held out for emphasis. "And I mean promise." She sketched a thumb across her chest in a dramatic X, marking the spot.

"Cross my heart." Scout let out another stressful heave, as if knowing that what he was about to say went against his character in every way imaginable, and Penny too recognized that he had promised himself to never tell anyone the words lingering on his tongue. He ran a thumb across his eyebrow out of habit, averting his eyes from hers.

"Back home my Ma used to play these old jazz records all the time, over and over again practically every night until the damn things warped so bad they were only good for holding butterscotch for company. Well, my brothers and I could do whatever we wanted during the week, but every Saturday night when we were kids she made us dress up in our Sunday best and parade around the living room, taking turns dancing with her. She said it would make us gentlemen in the end, but we all felt like total dopes. I mean, all we wanted to do was read comics or shoot our BB guns or go out and play baseball and there we were stuck inside slow dancin' with our Ma." Penny smiled lightly, resting her chin on the palm of her hand while Scout reminisced, his eyes only meeting hers once or twice. "Anyway, every single Saturday when it was my turn to dance she would put on the exact same record and played the same damn song - 'Anything Goes'."

"Cole Porter." She chimed in. Scout met her gaze with a look of stupefied marvel.

"Yeah, exactly. Well, I hated that song with such a passion that I swore I would never listen to it ever again - I'd rather go to an early grave than even hear the first of it. But now, and you're not allowed to repeat this to anyone, especially not any of my brothers should you meet 'em on the street, but now I kind of...miss it. It's been so long since I've seen Ma or heard any real music for that matter that it would...kind of be nice to hear again, ya know?" He finished with a sigh, scratching his cheek in embarrassment, but Penny seemed entirely sincere in her understanding. She tapped her fingers against the rim of the sink in slow contemplation, shooting him a scheming glance, then in one fell swoop took him by the shoulders and led him back to the other side of the room, leaving him facing the washroom door like a child in time-out.

"You're not allowed to look," she explained, sashaying back to the sink with a childish prance. She braced her hands on each side of the basin and gave him one last glance. "And no laughing! Not even a smile or I'll stop!" Scout stood stupefied, curious but too afraid of breaking her sudden burst of confidence to turn around. Instead, he simply stood staring down the chipped paint of the door before him, leaning a hand against the cold metal of the doorframe.

From the other side of the room she took a breath, shaking out her head in disbelief of her own gaul, but, nevertheless, began.

_"Times have changed, and we've often re-wound the clock since the Puritans got a shock when they landed on Plymouth Rock. If today any shock they should try to stem, 'stead of landing on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock would land on them."_

Scout felt his heart swell up like an overfilled water balloon, the warm water bubbling up in his chest like a reverse waterfall. He froze in a mystified surprise, arms letting loose the slightest unnoticeable tremble, and, staring emptily at the wall before him, he listened with a heavy heart. Penny's voice, sweetly soft in comparison to the sultry tones he remembered of the woman singer on his Ma's record, swelled into a rhythmic swing.

_"In olden days a glimpse of stockings was looked on as something shocking, now heaven knows - Anything Goes."_

His mind shot back to those living room ball dances - Saturday nights spent in pint-sized suits with neatly combed hair, and how his mother would pick him from the fray of his older brothers, each pushing and shoving in the way that children often do when they can't quite seem to sit still.

_"Good authors, too, who once knew better words now only use four letter words writing prose - Anything Goes."_

She would straighten the crinkled folds from his coat, leading him gently by the hand to the center of the living room rug, a record already spinning on its turntable, and there he would sway uncomfortably along with her as the bandstand picked up with a swingin' beat, Ella Fitzgerald's voice reverberating through their cramped living room with a vibrato hum. His brothers would hiss and chatter, mumbling jokes and insults as he quite literally faced the music, but with a whisper of his name his mother could always pull his attention away from the fray.

"One day," she whispered one night in her sweetly burlesque voice, humming low so only he could hear. "You're going to do this with a girl you love. And you may hate it now, but that night will make you feel like you're on top of the world."

_"The world has gone mad today and good's bad today and black's white today and day's night today, when most guys today that women prize today are just silly gigolos."_

With a quiet peek he turned from his place against the door, glancing slowly at the girl behind him singing her heart out. Eyes closed in a concentrated bliss she still hung over the sink, hips swinging back and forth ever so slightly to keep the song's beat, and slowly, quietly he broke his promise completely, cracking a soft smile as he took three slow paces behind her. With a steady hand he took her by the hips, picking up her hand from its place on the sink, and he watched on gently as her eyes flickered open in a chirp of surprise. His solemn smile told her to keep singing as they began to sway.

_"So though I'm not a great romancer I know that I'm bound to answer when you propose - Anything Goes."_

She met his gaze with a giddy chuckle as they swayed their way through their makeshift ballroom, sharing wild smiles and persistent laughs at such shameless late-night slow dances, and as they spun her voice reverberated against the room's cracked white tile giving her number the sound of a jazz-club ballad.

_"The world has gone mad today and good's bad today and black's white today and day's night today, when most guys today that women prize today are just silly gigolos."_

Scout swung her out gently, all reservations melting away in a sudden fizz of childish thrills, and as she kept singing, making her own version of that radio that Engie just couldn't quite crack, he suddenly knew in an unexpected flash that his mother, as she often is, had been right all along. Penny looked up at him with that same enigmatic smile that seemed a permanent part of her visage, and with locked eyes she quieted her singing to a soft hum.

_"So though I'm not a great romancer I know that I'm bound to answer when you propose,"_

Before he knew it she was up on her toes, her face so close to his that he could smell that same strawberry perfume that lapped at his senses sweetly before, and with a slow sway she leaned in close to his ear. He stood frozen and flushed, listening to his own heartbeat in its fluttering frenzy as it pounded in his ears, and with a rush of warm breath that kissed his neck with heat she slowly, softly, whispered a line that years ago would have made him shake with fury. Now, just like Ma said, all he felt was the shudder of first love.

_"Anything Goes."_


	6. The Girl Can't Help It

The days swung by without a call to battle in the way they often did - a fact that made Penny's on-edge nerves settle neatly into the niche of this brand new world like a cat getting comfortable on a window sill. The men she found herself suddenly surrounded by took her in with a surprising lack of pomp and circumstance, and instead of the cold shoulder she had thought to expect from a base full of dead-eyed contract killers most of them accepted her relatively kindly, a camaraderie, she discovered, forming out their mutual abandonment by RED proper. You were hard-pressed to find anyone on the base with a positive word to say about their mysterious employers, and this, she found, formed a bond deeper than any simple hello and a handshake.

In turn she learned their names, their quirks, their tales to tell, and they taught her the tricks of the trade to pass the time, spending sleepy mornings on the base's wooden parapet with dirty automatic weapons in hand. Sniper would slouch into shooting practicing, aiming with that kind of meticulous precision that Penny could only gaze at with an outsider's awe, and with a whip-cracking boom he'd shatter targets and send passing birds plummeting down to earth with an bewildered caw, slowly reloading after each bulls-eye with nothing more than a satisfied nod. Solider stood at attention nearby with a suspiciously watchful eye, raising a heavy eyebrow as his teammate demonstrated how to cock a gun or follow a moving a target, and in-between these unconventional spectacles they would trade battlefield tales, giving Penny a new perspective on the less-than-discrete ruse of Reliable Excavation Demolition. In return she would tell campfire stories of all that had happened in the outside world since their confinement out here in the great wide desert of Wherever, classes clawing to gather round the waifish girl in a kind of childish race to story time, men gasping and hoorah-ing over the news of a new James Bond movie or the prospect of putting a man on the moon. Despite any protests they may have expressed behind closed doors about how childish she was or how she asked too many questions or how she smiled too much, even when there was nothing to smile about, it was moments like these that showed how the boys really felt about Penny - even if they found her daydreaming aloofness disconcerting and her childish tendencies mind bogglingly irritating, they still had to appreciate what she had to offer by way of news.

Meanwhile Scout, tangled inevitably in the flurry of commotion his teammates made about her assimilation into the base, found himself taking her presence in a different way entirely. She made him punch drunk, sloppy, uncoordinated in all ways, and in attempt to avoid askew glances and passed mutters from his teammates he found it best to simply stay out of her way when others were around. Words would circulate around the mess hall like kitchen table gossip, each assassin throwing in their opinion on the unlikely accomplice to their daily grind, and when the train of table talk finally reached him he found himself devoid of a decent answer. How could he explain how her meandering glances, her wistful smiles, made him shiver like a lovestruck schoolboy? How the way she seemed to breeze through the base instead of falling in line with the heavy clatter of combat boots he was accustomed to made his head spin and his heart race? He fumbled for words in those instances, poking intently at his dinner with a mangled fork, and made a careful point to avoid the watchful eyes of those around him.

"She's, um... she's alright, I guess." He would stammer, adding with a hint of honesty: "I'm not used to having a girl around, man."

Spy, breaking from his usual intent silence at the end of the table, shot out a sharp laugh.

"Zat goes without zaying." And with a violent clatter the table would descend back into its usual madness, Scout flinging trays towards his reserved teammate with a slew of "fuck you"'s and "you fucking French rat"'s. They were all willing to admit that Penny's arrival had changed the entire clockwork of the base, but moments like these, the usual harmless fist fights and lash-outs met with unbridled laughter and ante-up betting, were really what kept them all sane. In such an upside down world where girls could fall from the sky and land with a smile and a hello, something had to stay the same.

And so with a harsh stumble Scout would ease around the truth of how he felt, quickstepping past his teammates or ducking out of populated rooms whenever the subject arose. Despite his best efforts, though, his impulses would always get the best of him when, in a tousled fury, one of his teammates would question her arrival suspiciously - a popular topic for the more paranoid members. He always shot to life like a bottle-rocket with a lit fuse, shouting out a string of less-than-eloquent curses at the disbeliever and pointing out how damn dedicated she had been to the whole fucking team since day one, and despite his back alley diction in a way he was right. Since her arrival, Penny had turned into a kind of ethereal backbone to the whole band, dabbling neatly in all of those grey areas that the specialized elects had no experience in. She turned measly rations into actual meals and sewed loose patches back onto sleeves by hand, spellbinding the entire base with the voodoo of half-hearted domesticity. A Snow White amongst nine gun-slinging dwarves, the boys were transfixed and terrified at the same time by her girlish game of House, some watching on carefully while others made a solid attempt to stay far out of her way, and, like cavemen shown fire for the very first time, with a little bit of practice they got along just fine.

Yet despite the tiny thrills she inspired when she hand-washed a shirt or sewed on a button, in all actuality her domestic skills hung well below sub-par in comparison to those of most girls her age in the outside world, each well-meant attempt punctuated by innumerable pin pricks and stove burns and other unique battle scars. In high school she had discovered that her lack of any remarkable talents wasn't rectified with homemaking, and despite her masochistically painful hard work she had still flunked out of her Home Economics class, burning soufflés and breaking lamps she was meant to repair with a heartbreaking clatter. The women around her insisted with a hiss that she'd never get a husband with clumsy hands like those, tsking quietly as she swept up shattered glass or bandaged mild burns, yet she discovered now with a self-satisfied smirk that trivialities like marriage weren't on the menu here; living to see the next sunrise was the real battle, and on some strange level that she was reluctant to admit aloud she appreciated that. Unladylike as it was, she found solace in the way the battles played out, how calculated each shot was, how thorough every move seemed to be, and like a chess game in high speed the bases would descend into this perfect choreography of battle that was, even in the eyes of an apathetic pacifist, simply spellbinding. The appreciation each man seemed to have for life was a breath of fresh air, coming from the mundane world where the most remarkable experience seemed to be showing up to work on time or learning shorthand, and the primal and genuine relationship that they had with each coming day made every morning a little more exciting. There was an actual appreciation for being alive here, something so easily dismissed in the outside world, and that alone spun lazy days into grand spectaculars. Even during the most lethargic of days she would still find herself tagging along with Demo to see how he made napalm from sawdust and left-over orange juice or with Engie to watch as he haphazardly drew out equations that she had only seen in the thickest of calculus textbooks, explaining in a low drawl how everything and everyone could be simplified into a number and an equation. The fort was never without its own unique brand of excitement, and even when the boys seemed completely incapacitated by their boredom they would still take to shooting at each other just for some mangled thrill of battle, an action scene which sent Penny's perspective of boredom on a tailspin.

This place, it was a battlefield with casual Fridays - a war-zone where the battle-cries were punctuated with giddy laughter and wild grins - and after a few days Penny had already realized in the back of her mind that the fort was one of the few places on this little planet where she had ever felt truly at ease, despite the newfound threat of stray bullets and an oh-so-close enemy base. There was no sense of normality here, no need to be the rosy-cheeked bride that she had found herself straying from so strongly back in the "real world", no job hunting, no blind dates, no evening cooking classes that her mother had so eagerly signed her up for in an attempt to make her a "suitable" wife. There was only life - pure, undiluted and entirely thrilling. The worries here seemed so incredibly substantial that they weren't even worries at all, a contradiction that Penny was completely content with, and despite having enemies, real enemies with guns and weapons and an assassin's training to boot, she figured that if she did catch a bullet to the chest or a knife to the back then at least she went out spectacularly, dying in a place that had, at least for a few days, made her truly happy.

And so they all lived together in an awkward harmony, forming a dysfunctional family of contract killers and psychopaths with an outsider stuck in between in a fumbled spin-off of Americana. And in the midst of this happy family stood Scout, dazed and jittery by his own slew of emotions and suddenly self-loathing from his inability to hold up the tough-kid sucker punch of machismo that had kept his standing here for so long. Penny's arrival was a bittersweet slice of humble pie - part of him despised the fact that anyone could break his will and shatter his control so quickly, let alone a tiny goddamned fairy of a girl whose crowning achievement on the base so far was that she could stay out of the way when the Boss Lady called, but the other part of him shuddered with the cold shock of knowing unequivocally, indisputably, absolutely how he felt. He fell over himself to reconcile the two worlds - the opposing tops of emotion that spun wildly inside of his already dizzied head - but instead ended up laughing too loud when the boys would make a joke about her or knocking on her door at all hours with nothing more to say than a silly question or an indisputably awkward excuse to see her again. Ironically though he could somehow manage to calm his nerves when they were alone, holding normal conversations about their lives before RED while she peeled potatoes in the kitchen or when she followed him to batting practice, but around his teammates the fear of his puppy love being discovered wreaked havoc on his already fragile social skills.

And so, reluctant to admit it, Penny was happy, content with having found a place to call her own. And, reluctant to admit it, Scout was happy, content with having found a girl that he would have killed to call his own. And though neither of them would say so, both were spellbound with something entirely new, and, unsurprisingly, both would do everything in their power to keep Penny from ever going back.


End file.
